Yogis Anonymous

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If a person is crazy about you, you’re going to know. It’s not going to be a mystery. I get emails from people every day who ask about various situations they’re in. This guy barely calls. This girl doesn’t make a lot of time for the relationship. This person is probably seeing other people. This one is separated or divorced, but still hanging on to their ex. This one used to like me, but I didn’t like her, and now I do and she doesn’t. I like this woman but she likes other women. I have a huge crush on this guy but he’s gay. Or married to my sister. Or dating my best friend. I like this woman but she has a boyfriend, but really she’s in love with me she just can’t hurt the other guy’s feelings. We used to go out and now we’re both dating other people, but last week we fell into bed and now it’s a mess. I like this girl but my family doesn’t. I like this guy but I’m too scared to tell him. I went out with this guy and it was amazing, but I never heard from him so now I stalk him. But just a little. Mostly on Facebook. Okay, sometimes I sit across the street from his house. He may have gotten a restraining order. But I’m pretty sure he’s gonna come around.

I’ve loved people who were distant or inattentive, or downright mean sometimes. I’ve crushed on people who sent very mixed messages. I’ve liked people who didn’t call. So we can talk about all that, but please. Please take the mystery out of this for yourself. If a person wants to be with you, they will find a way.

The real, painful issue to examine is why you’re giving so much of your precious time and energy to anyone who isn’t running toward you with everything they’ve got. Perhaps you’ve forgotten you’re made up of 37 trillion or so cells that have never come together in exactly the same way to be YOU at any time in the past, nor will they again at any time in the future. There are seven billion people on our planet, and only ONE, particular, amazing you. So why would you second-guess your value? If you undervalue yourself, and accept treatment that really isn’t what you deserve, you, my friend, are the architect of your own betrayal and your own suffering. The story to look at is never what the other person is doing; the story to examine is always the story of your participation. Participate in joy and freedom and recognition and celebration. In understanding and appreciation, and oh, wow, I’d almost given up hope I’d find someone like you. Choose love. You’re too incredible to wait around on stand-by for a boat that couldn’t dock where you are, anyway. Get out of the airport and head for the ocean. Sending you love, Ally Hamilton

Last week I received an email from a colleague that really got me fired up. I wanted to laugh it off or shrug it off, but it got right under my skin. It was pedantic, arrogant and fairly offensive, and I have a strong feeling it’s not an email he would have sent to a male colleague. I could be wrong on that, of course; it’s possible he talks down to everyone, regardless of gender. Thankfully, I’ve been at this game called life long enough to realize it’s never smart to write back when you’re in a reactive state. Because believe me, the email I was writing in my head was fiery. I went about my day, teaching and picking up my kids from school, going to the dog park with our energetic, mouthy puppy, but every so often, in he crept, Mr. Let Me Tell You What Yoga Is. Let me enlighten you with my knowledge. And every time, I got pissed again, and started firing back in my head. Then I’d catch myself, and shake my head and laugh at the balls of this guy, and come back to laughing in earnest with my son and daughter, taking in the gorgeous day, feeling the breeze on my cheek. It’s always our choice whether we receive the insult or not, after all. I never did write back, nor will I, because some things simply don’t deserve the time and energy required to respond. You live your life and your truth with your heart wide open. You have nothing to prove to anyone. But I went through half a dozen drafts in my head, and I let him steal way too much of my day. My meditation teacher, S.N. Goenka, calls this ,”boiling yourself”. The event is over, but you re-live it in your head, and get yourself as worked up as if it were happening in the now.

It’s really hard to hold your center when you feel insulted, attacked, misunderstood, dismissed or otherwise pained by the comments or behavior of someone else, and that’s especially true if it’s a person you love. (Thankfully not the case in my scenario from last week :)). When loved ones are in pain, and their pain spills out all over our lives, it’s incredibly challenging to love them without being held hostage by their suffering. Life brings everything, and not all of it is easy. In fact, some of it will break your heart boldly and without warning on a rainy Sunday afternoon, or a gorgeous Tuesday morning. Life is under no obligation to give us what we want. Some people will face loss and pain that is incomprehensible; it’s not a level playing field. And not everyone handles the everything that life brings in a way that makes sense from outside the experience. Some pain is so knifing, people run from it. Try to numb it out. Push it down, avoid it at all costs. You cannot make a person ready to face their dragons. That’s inside work. When you love a person who’s in self-destruct mode, it’s the most challenging thing in the world to disengage if you must. But it’s an essential lesson in life–we cannot save other people, we each must save ourselves. Or not. You cannot manage another person’s path. You can’t take a person by the shoulders and shove them into the cave of their own despair, telling them to sit there and feel it all and let it wash over them ’til the heat of it is released. That’s a task they choose or they don’t. All you can do is manage your own path. Do your own healing, return to your own love and joy and inner yes. And if a person you love is flailing about it pain, you can do everything in your power to support them. But you do them no good if you get down in the mud and flail about with them. That’s not going to help them, but it is going to hurt you. Keep coming back to love. That’s the best thing you can do for yourself, and everyone in your life. Direct your energy. Sending you love, and wishing you love, Ally

When I was thirteen I had a ballet teacher who was incredibly hard on me. He’d shame me in class and never offer a kind word, no matter how hard I worked. One day as I stood on my toes and twirled and twirled, he yelled out, “You could walk into any company, Hamilton, and they’d take one look at your body and hire you. But as soon as they saw you dance, they’d fire you!’ I remember the feeling of shame, and the heat that rose up and stained my cheeks as I kept twirling and trying. Tears escaping the corners of my eyes, heart crushed. I danced that day with a fire raging inside me, until he finally asked if I was okay. Which shocked me, and made me wonder at my rage. Years later, after I’d stopped dancing, I ran into him on Broadway. He called out to me. He seemed much older, but his gait was unmistakable, and he was very kind. He asked me how I was, how my little brother was, and where I was dancing. When I told him I quit, he was stunned. He said he’d always thought I’d been special, that’s why he was so hard on me. The fact that he was so hard on me was one of the reasons I’d quit. I didn’t want to be in a shaming environment, hating myself, working for the approval of someone who never gave it.

If you’re a certain kind of person (caretakers and people-pleasers, take note), and you sense someone doesn’t approve of you, the disapproval is a hook. Once you’re on the line, you can dance like a clown, but you’ll never get the affirmation you seek. Unless you affirm yourself. I’ve had people roll up their mats and leave my yoga class, I’ve had people write nasty posts about this blog. Not everyone is going to like me, or you. The main thing is being able to look yourself in the eye at the end of the day when you’re brushing your teeth in front of the mirror. Being true to yourself and true to your heart, and not allowing anyone or any circumstance to crush it, at least not for long. If you live your life trying to please everyone else, you’re going to be miserable. You’ll be coming from a place of neediness and desperation. There’s no power in that, and you can never make everyone happy. I’d argue you can never make anyone happy. People are happy or they aren’t. That’s inside work. But if you’re living in alignment with what’s true for you, if you’re honoring your intuition and following the pull of that yes, you really can’t go wrong. That yes is your connection to your purpose and your gifts. Your gifts are yours to share. If you’re coming from that place, you’re coming from love. People who are angry or bitter may not like that. It’s hard to be coming from a place of pain. Wish them love, but follow your heart, so when you see those stickers on your mirror at the end of the day, it’s a no-brainer. Sending you so much love, Ally

When I was 26 years old, I stopped into a pet store one day to buy dog food for a friend’s dog, and I saw this tiny, sickly puppy in the corner of an enormous cage. His brown, pink-rimmed eyes were huge in his tiny head, and he was shaking uncontrollably. And although I’d never seen it in a dog before, he had a runny nose. He was one of the most pitiful creatures I’d ever seen, and of course I fell in love on the spot. On the front of the cage there was a sign. They’d originally been asking $2500 for him, but then he’d been slashed to $2000. Then $1500, $1000. By the time I got there, they were asking $500. They sent him out the door with me for $250. Two days later I had him at the vet, who told me to take him back to the pet store. He had bacterial pneumonia, and the vet didn’t even want him in the office, because it’s highly contagious. I begged him even though he was adamant. Said I’d already fallen in love with my dog, and taking him back to the place that had neglected him wasn’t even an option. I think I even appealed to whatever it was within him that had inspired him to be a vet in the first place. I know I cried. He put my dog on intravenous antibiotics in the basement, in a cage between cardboard boxes full of puppy pads, and dog food, and Frontline. There was a leaky pipe nearby, and it was pretty dark down there. I know because I visited my dog every day for hours, for the 10 days he was there. The vet told me not to get my hopes up because he was almost definitely a lost cause, but I brought my dog home on the tenth day, and he was my best friend for the next ten years, until he died suddenly one morning, two weeks before I had my son.

Pretty frequently I get emails from people who are in the corner of a huge cage, shaking with a runny nose. Not literally, of course, because that would be weird. But metaphorically. Sometimes the cage is a relationship, or a job, or a way of thinking about themselves or the world. Whatever it is, they’re in there, shaking, as their light dims. Their belief in themselves dwindling like the price on the front of my dog’s cage. Sometimes the person says nothing is really wrong. The job is not bad. The partner is loving and kind. The way of thinking is what they were taught, and how they’ve always been. They think they must be crazy. But. There’s something inside them that’s saying no. No, life should not feel like a cage.

All kinds of things keep people shaking uncontrollably as their light dims. Fear. Guilt. Shame. Sometimes it feels like people are asking permission. Is it okay for me to go to the basement with the leaky pipe (because healing is lonely, dark, painful work) and heal what needs to be healed so I can get out of this cage and live a life where I get to breathe, and it doesn’t feel like there’s this huge weight on my chest, smothering my heart? And I mean, of course it is. If you don’t leave the cage, you die. Maybe not literally, but your spark dies, and you may as well be dead at that point. But, other people will be hurt. Yes, that sucks. That’s brutal, and it would be a beautiful thing if we could all live our truths and never cause anyone else pain. Except, I’ll tell you, I’ve learned and grown the most from the painful times in my life. We can never ever know what another person’s journey is supposed to look like. We can only manage our own, kindly, honestly, and with compassion. And if you don’t follow the road marked My Truth, your heart breaks and you lose the will to do much of anything.

No one will ever thank you for your pity. No one deserves to be loved half-way, or even most of the way. Including you. The road marked My Truth is hardly ever well-paved and well-lit. You have to cut through the brush with no map, and the only thing you can really carry with you is belief in yourself. You won’t be stuck in the basement forever. But you do have to get out of the cage. Sending you love and a huge hug, Ally

You will not be happy when you lose 10 pounds, or have a different job or a drive better car, when you meet the “right” person, or when “things calm down”. You will not be happy when your biceps or bank account or boobs are bigger, or when your waistline is smaller. You will not be happy if you take medication to grow the hair on your head, or when you wax hair off in other places. You are either happy inside, or you are not happy inside. Nothing outside will fix that for long. You surely can’t buy it.

We have a crazy system set up around us (consumerism and distraction), which simply reflects back the system that exists within us (there’s a void inside I need to fill!). If you don’t wrestle with life’s big questions, and by that I mean, “Is this all there is? What am I doing here? Who am I?”, then those unanswered questions own you, and you’ll have to keep dancing around distracting yourself from the discomfort of not having worked them out for the rest of your life, convinced that happiness lies in external stuff, and wondering why you can’t get there.

Peace comes from understanding and accepting that one day your body will give out and you will exhale for the last time. I hope it’s one day way way off in the future, and that you have the time between then and now to figure out what lights you up from the inside. Because that’s where you find happiness, or inner peace, or the ability to face reality as it is, which is not always as we’d like it to be. It happens inside you as you develop the ability to love yourself, to find your purpose, to uncover your particular gifts and give them away freely, fully, with total abandon. To show yourself some compassion and kindness, to do the work to heal. If you pin your happiness to certain events going or not going the way you’d like, you are nothing more than a victim of circumstance, and there’s just no power in that. We can never control circumstances, we can only work on the way we respond, the amount of power we give to those waves of life that are challenging. We can swim against the current which is exhausting, or we can embrace the zen proverb: Let go or be dragged. Sometimes we just have to realize what we know. Your happiness is good for you, and it’s good for everyone else, too. Sending you so much love, Ally Hamilton

There’s a powerful quote from the Upanishads, “Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; for it becomes your destiny.” Whatever you feed will grow and strengthen. This is why the quality of your life will largely depend upon the quality of your internal dialogue. I say that, recognizing life will bring all kinds of circumstances, some people will have a very painful path to walk, and ultimately, all of us will have to grapple with life’s big questions (Who am I? What am I doing here? Is this all there is?), on our own. No matter your path, you simply can’t evict that voice, that voice is your constant companion. Every thought you have creates a chemical reaction in your body. That’s your soil, and it’s either going to be full of lies and poison, or it’s going to be full of love.

In a garden, weeds steal water, nutrients, and space from your plants. Some give off natural herbicides killing off other plants in close proximity. Left unchecked, weeds will overgrow your garden, and “choke out” anything in their path. Here are a list of weeds to watch out for: Fear, envy, laziness, unexpressed rage or grief, shame, guilt, bitterness, pettiness, prejudice, insecurity and doubt. If you feed those weeds, you can bet they’re going to choke out any potential for the light to reach your plants. Or plans. I’m not saying it’s realistic to expect you’ll never grow a weed, I’m just saying be vigilant about grabbing your weed whacker as fast as you can. The best one I know is gratitude.A list of plants you really want to grow in your garden: Self-knowledge, love, truth, acceptance, inspiration, trust, joy, integrity, dedication, perseverance, forgiveness, loyalty and thankfulness. If you feed these plants, you will be amazed by the incredible garden that springs up within you and around you. Growing a garden of love takes time and patience, and pretty constant tending. It’s not going to happen overnight. In fact, depending on your path, you may have to spend years uprooting certain weeds. Too much water in your garden, and your thoughts become diluted, your seeds won’t take root. “Too much water” in this instance might include too much seeking out of other people’s opinions. No one can advise you about the growth of your own particular garden, because no one but you has ever worked with your exact fertilizer, weather conditions, schedules of pollination, and so on. No one else has weathered the exact storms you have, or felt the gentle breezes of your experience. So no one else can tell you how best to grow your garden. That’s your work to figure out.

If you avoid digging your hands in your own dirt because the thought of it makes you too tired or too scared, then get a picture in your mind of a garden that’s been overgrown by weeds. It looks constricted, right? Full of thorns and brittleness. It’s wild, and there can be a lot of beauty in that, but it’s not an easy place to grow anything. If that’s the garden of your mind, that’s where you live. In a creaky old rocking chair that you barely have the energy or desire to rock. Because life is exhausting when you don’t root down into your dirt so you can rise up out of it, when you let the weeds take over everything. Rooting down just means that you’re willing to sit in the center of your pain and let it open you. Growing a garden of love means you are going to examine your thorns and bleed a little. You’ll be amazed, but the flowers that spring up from those drops of blood will be the most gorgeous ones of all. Those are your Freedom Flowers. You won’t get those unless you understand your terrain, and traverse it well and deeply–let the rainy days nourish you, learn how to bend when the storms come so you don’t break, trust that the sun is going to shine again. And when it does, know that it will open you further, feed you, and encourage you to blossom, to extend yourself, to reach for the light.

You are not here to feed rage or fear or doubt. You’re here to release those feelings back into the earth. To let your tears wash them away. To pick your mind up again and again, and redirect it to all the beauty within you and around you. All the love. All the peace and happiness and satisfaction that happens when your garden is full of I Know What I Am Flowers. And I Know Why I’m Here Plants. That’s a garden you’ll want to hang out in, because it will never stop amazing you. Your colors will be so vibrant, so deep, other people will want to come and sit in your garden with you, and just take it in. Maybe take a seed or two of yours home with them. And you won’t mind because you’ll know you have so many. More than you need, more than you can ever use. And you’ll want to help other people grow their gardens. And if you’re a smart garden, you’ll ask for some of their seeds, too. So you can grow those incredible Compassion Flowers, Empathy Plants, and Connection Trees. And you’ll think, even with all of life’s storms, this is a beautiful, rich, mysterious experience. I wonder what will happen next? And you’ll just sway in the breeze, open, content, aware and full of gratitude. I’d love to come sit in your garden right now, whether you need help weeding, or you have your My Heart is Open flowers on display. Sending you some love seeds if you need them, Ally Hamilton